The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for the disintegration and tribochemical activation in particular of inorganic materials.
Disintegrators are known for a number of applications. In cement production, for instance, on the industrial scale, chunks of limestone and various additives are first comminuted, then heated to temperatures of 1400° C. to 1600° C., sintered, and then ground to the desired grain sizes. The disadvantage of this method is that a large amount of energy is needed for activating the starting materials.
Known from DE 195 48 645 is attaining an elevated potential energy content and thus increased chemical reactability using tribochemically treated crystals. For instance, mechanical activation of cement facilitates a substantial increase in the strength of the hydrated mineral bonding agent. The reasons for this are the primary particle size and the lattice distortions of these particles.
A plurality of processing methods are available for tribometric processing of starting materials such as e.g. grinding by stressing between two surfaces, or using collisions between freely mobile particles and solid surfaces or collisions among the particles themselves. So-called disintegrators are used for inserting high potential energy into the smallest of particles on a scale of a few μm and for thus causing lattice distortions. The construction principle is characterized by two pin rings or ring gears. In one variant, as described in DE-AS 12 36 915, the particles are comminuted in collisions with pins or teeth. At least three collisions with pins at intervals of no more than 50 ms at a relative speed of at least 15 m/s are required for adequate activation. In this arrangement it is disadvantageous that the wear on the pins is very high, especially when using very hard starting materials.
In another variant, for example, in accordance with DE 30 34 849 A1, the starting material is primarily comminuted using particle collisions in vortices, the vortices being generated by specially shaped blade rings driven in opposite directions. At the same time wear is substantially reduced on the edges of the blade rings or ring gears that are impacted.
The activation that can be attained with known disintegrators or mills is not adequate for developing novel inorganic bonding agents. Particularly when there are small, light-weight particles such as occur after brief milling, it is not possible to cause these particles to collide at a high relative speed of for instance greater than 100 m/s by embedding these particles in a stream of air or in an air vortex.
The object of the invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for disintegration in which dynamic treatment of the particles occurs with substantially increased energies and rates of effectiveness compared to the prior art.